Five years after coining the famous 'axis' phrase, David Frum reflects on its shortcomings in an interview with Der Spiegel:

If you are looking for states that sponsor terrorism, I think there is no state in the world that has a worse record than Pakistan. And if you are concerned about the spread of extremist ideology, there is no state in the world that has a worse record than Saudi Arabia.

And, tellingly:

I would say that the story of the Bush Administration is the story of an administration caught halfway across the bridge; they did not want to face up to the magnitude of the problems. Its policies are premised on the assumption that we have a firm alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. If it had been possible in 2001 to address the problem of Saudi Arabia, maybe there never would have been an Iraq war.

So, from today's point of view, the Bush-record is hardly 'neo-conservative, argues Frum:

The story of the Bush Administration is a story of absorbing certain doctrines that are called "neo-conservative," but entrusting them to be executed by people who did not believe in those doctrines. And by always limiting the applications of those doctrines, so as not to touch on the really deep American commitments to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. If Bush were a neo-conservative, as everybody said, then his response to 9/11 would have been that this originated in an extremism that the government of Saudi Arabia has whipped up in order to protect itself from the consequences of its own corruption.

It's a fascinating interview and it reveals the gap between some foreign policy idealists and the pragmatists in the executive branch. As I have mentioned time and again, Bush never was a real visionary and the events of 9/11 forced him to assume the role of someone who could by the force of ideology materially change the Middle East. It was however never all that, and as Frum says, "he tried".

So Bush's lack of conviction - something manifest in Tony Blair when he compelled his skeptical Labour Party to go into Iraq - combined with the reluctance to lean more heavily on such players as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have created a questionable record. The net of that is, whatever the outcome of the Baghdad surge, the next occupant of the White House will have to somehow deal with an enlarged 'axis of evil'. And in that, even a Democrat would have to borrow far more from neo-conservative thought than Bush ever did.

Over the weekend Arjan and I exchanged a few e-mails, discussing reform in the Arab world and what parallels there are with the Reformation of the 16th century. That issue will be revisited here or on Arjan's blog later, but we agreed that those who could initiate non-religious reform - meaning social, political and economic - are often no longer living in the place where their ideas are most applicable. But their voices are heard, just take a look at the very good and informative blog of this London resident of Saudi origins, The Religious Policeman and visit him regularly.

Via Jeff Jarvis: Take a look at this photo. Only in a second term, I guess.

Was my initial reaction after hearing the news yesterday that al-Qaeda attacked the US Consulate in Jeddah (or Jidda?), yet at the same wondering: is that all that the Saudi-based jihadists can come up with these days? Scale however may not have been the objective of this effort:

The consulate attack appeared designed to grab the limelight as much as refocus the campaign on a target likely to draw sympathy from ordinary Saudis. Many citizens, including independent clerics who have condemned al-Qaeda's campaign against foreign nationals in the kingdom, are more willing to acquiesce in attacks on American targets.

We are overestimating the powers of the House of Saud. As in Europe, the Muslim clergy appears to be setting the agenda and fanning the flames. If European governments have a hard time taking on these disruptive elements, then try and imagine what it's like for Saudi authorities willing to co-operate and combat terrorism by taking on the very source of their nation's cultural and religious identity. They may be provoking a civil war. To be continued.

James Joyner is on top of things Saudi, but I have to qualify one of his statements where he argues that the terror threat does not come from the poor and educated, but from the well-trained sons of the affluent. The latter is certainly true but these well educated guys have a far better chance of succeeding and getting on the ground support in a country where a rapidly growing segment of frustrated, poor and uneducated youth is looking for a way out of their dismal lives. It takes a certain type of intellectual to achieve this, which is why the Russian Revolution and Nazism succeeded and why for instance equally radical groups such as Baader-Meinhof and the IRA failed: a prosperous, employed, freedom enjoying middle-class is probably the last group of people to be mobilized behind a radical ideology that seeks to overthrow the current order. Given that and the incompetent and divided leadership that currently rules Saudi Arabia (think about the analogies with the Weimar Republic and the last Czar) Saudi Arabia is poised to be the defining battleground in struggle with Islamist terror.

Another devastating attack over the weekend in Riyadh, underscoring the fact that the battle has been taken to the Muslim heartland. Two things occurred to me. One, for all the warnings about the al-Qaeda threat I find a bomb in a residential Saudi neighborhood, and I am not discounting the horrors of seeing dead and wounded civilians including children, a feeble show of force. The other thought related to the targeting of Muslims, here’s the Daily Telegraph:

The attack has engendered unprecedented condemnation throughout the Middle East and will have damaged al-Qa'eda's appeal as anti-western and pro-Islamic.

Or not. They attacked middle class Saudis that adopted Western lifestyles and by doing so sent a very strong signal to the growing disenfranchised masses living in poverty in the wealthy kingdom. One part of the message is that only strict adherence to the Islamist norms that al-Qaeda propagates will ensure you a measure of safety and secondly, as I have argued before, the battle is equally economic. The disgruntled and unemployed poor need to be mobilized against the privileged few. Those arguments are wrapped in the all encompassing strategy to instill fear and to do whatever is necessary to destabilize the House of Saud. It is likely that the fall-out of this attack will be negative for al-Qaeda, not because the nature of the bombing was so heinous, but because strategies based on infusing fear have a history of failing in the long run. Yet, they also have a history of running long before they run out of steam.

You do not have to buy a hardcopy of the National Post to read the serialized account of Bill Sampson's years in Saudi captivity, it's now online here.

So, finally, five Brits and one Canadian were released from a Saudi prison today, after having been incarcerated for nearly three years on bombing-related charges. Many felt the charges were bogus and it now seems that the Saudi government has finally seen the light and done what it should have done years ago.

The Saudi situation continues to bother me and I am not the only one. Ken Adelman a former assistant of Donald Rumsfeld during the Ford years and arms control director under Reagan is clearly upset as to why the Bush administration does not want to declassify 28 pages dealing with Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The pages are part of the Joint Intelligence Committee report on 9/11 that was released last week. The Saudis are equally upset, however after a meeting yesterday between Bush and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal at the White House it transpired that the Saudis would not longer dispute the President’s decision to keep the file closed. The latter is probably not an entirely relevant piece of news as Bush has probably disclosed some if not all to al-Faisal, and the contents have no doubt encouraged the Saudi Foreign Minister to keep quiet for the next little while. This affair begs the question as to what the contents are of these pages and why it is so vital that they are not released to the public at large. The New York Times last Saturday commented that:

“Some people who have read the classified chapter said it represented a searing indictment of how Saudi Arabia's ruling elite have, under the guise of support for Islamic charities, distributed millions of dollars to terrorists through an informal network of Saudi nationals, including some in the United States.”

This in fact is hardly new, but the fact that the Bush administration is desperately trying to keep these 28 pages under wraps is news. The administration will surely have ways to protect some of the sources for the information and ways to protect various methods of information gathering. It is telling that Senator Shelby, one of the ranking Republican members on the committee responsible for the 9/11 inquiry, believes that 95% of the pages in question can be released. Frantic attempts to salvage the uncomfortable relationship with the Saudis raises the eyebrows as the relationship had started to unravel long before 9/11. Any claim to a “special relationship” is debatable as the Saudi economy is in desperate shape and needs to pump oil, and the US no longer needs the country as a launching pad for an attack on Iraq. What is more, to the extent that we need the Saudis we should be dictating the terms of the relationship and with renewed terrorist warnings we may indeed need their assistance in rooting out terrorist cells. If that is the case and if we need to keep some documents closed in order to secure that co-operation then the Bush team may playing its cards wisely, but for now we have not seen any evidence of this. The administration’s performance of last week as well as the Saudi role in all of this raises a lot of questions.

At the same time over in Canada the government is also conducting secret negotiations with the Saudis. They have commented that it is confident that Bill Sampson, a Canadian sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for a deadly car bombing that he apparently did not commit, will be released after three years in solitary confinement. This is definitely progress but it surprises me that it has taken this long. I believe that shortly after the bombings in Riyadh a few months back the Saudis had announced their intention to release Mr. Sampson as well as some of the others implicated in the same bombings. We are still talking about this to the Saudis?

It appears most of the west’s dealings with Saudi Arabia take place behind closed doors. For those that are apparently innocent and remain in Saudi cells to those who have lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks it is time that these doors are unlocked and opened. The new balance of power allows us to pry open these doors and lift the veil of secrecy.

From the Singaporean Straits Times, this interesting piece on the growing divide between the authorities and the clergy in Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials are apparently stepping up their efforts to root out radical islam by taking on certain clerics and at the same time they are capturing al-Qaeda members. On the steps against clerics Deputy Minister Abdul-Rahman Al-Matroudi of the Religious Affairs Ministry said:

“… clerics would be instructed to tell worshippers that the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in the United States violated Islamic teachings" Said Mr Matroudi: "If someone is found not fit to be in that job, he will be asked to resign, or be retrained"

There are two obvious problems with this statement. Firstly, what have clerics been saying up to now about September 11? Probably not anything that would condemn these attacks so it may take a while to counter the many ill informed beliefs held by the Saudi population in relation to the events of that dreadful day. The second problem has some long-term ramifications. While it is great that some steps are being taken to take on the islamist threat it makes you wonder where all these radical clerics will go once the authorities have driven them out of the officially endorsed mosques? The great thing about the state and mosque sitting on the same chair is that one can tell the other what it should do. The Saudi government is now using that position for the better, but what if all of a sudden many desert the mosque and set up their own independent religious outfits? The newly spawned mosques will not be lacking for potential followers:

The economy is also one of Saudi Arabia's biggest headaches. Young people who are jobless - and disillusioned with the political system - are ripe for recruitment into radical networks. The demographics are important: Half the country's 14 million people are under 25. And unemployment among this group is estimated to be as high as 30 per cent.

I am not sure where the 14 million number comes from, last time I looked there were 21 million Saudis, but the argument is clear. Economic disarray (oil prices are going south), poverty and an ever growing group of disenchanted youngsters point to the conclusion that arresting militants and regulating the clergy are only the beginning of turning this troubled kingdom around.

The Saudi bombings earlier this week put the fate of seven westerners jailed in Saudi Arabia back into the spotlight. Some of them were facing capital punishment after a secret trial for their alleged involvement in an earlier bombing which was said to be related to a war among expats in Saudi Arabia over an illegal liquor business. Apparently they had confessed to their crimes amid rumors of torture, but the suspicion has always been that the Saudis needed a scapegoat in order to deflect attention from the fact that terrorism is a homegrown Saudi commodity. The initial reaction on last Monday was that the attacks of that day would no doubt shed new light on the plight of these seven westerners, and surprise, today it appeared that King Fahd is looking favorably at a request for clemency. This is justice Saudi style. Let’s be glad some people that have been wrongly accused and abused can finally come home.